Review

So I know Demon's Souls has been out for months in the US and much longer over seas. Now if you have heard anything about this game it has been how amazingly difficult it is. In a way that is true, and in a way it is not. I just beat my first play through last night at about 50 hours of playtime.

The story is mostly forgettable, there are some characters and ideas that are good but the game doesn't do very much to power the story. This game is all about gameplay.

The audio is good over all the sounds and ambiance work well and most of the voice work is solid though some of it feels very forced at times.

The graphics are neither good or bad, but I was impressed with the animation of the main character, dealing with all the weapon types you have available.

Now on to the point of this game, the gameplay is not exactly difficult it is.....old school. Remember when you were playing old school NES games like Ninja Gaiden and you would always die on the level 3 boss and have to start at the beginning every single time. It was an era before checkpoints or re spawn. You made a mistake and you paid for it. Demon's souls works like that. You can get to the end of the section you are playing and then get torn apart by the boss only to be put back at the start of the section with all the enemies back. And to top it off you lose all the experience (aka souls) that you had, not just the ones you gained in that section but all that you had when you came in too. Now you have the chance to work you way back to where you died and reclaim all those souls but if you die in the process then they are gone forever. Not to mention when you die you come back in soul form which means you are weaker and have 50% of your HP. To top everything off, the more you die the harder the game becomes making enemies more resistant to your attacks and able to penetrate your defenses easier as well. This game is not forgiving and punishes freely, but that makes every victory that much sweeter.

As for the online component, other games can be invited into your game at anytime to help you, and on the flip side they can invade your game at anytime to kill you, and it happens.....a lot.

In closing I have to say this game is one of the best I played in a long time, and the reason people are having difficulty is because many of today's gamers were not raised on the pain of the NES generation, either because they are too young or didn't get into gaming until later in their life so they are not used to using patience and having such high stakes for failure.